Sir Hugh came in to enquire how they were getting on, but perhaps really to escape from the publicity of the crowd.

‘All right,’ said his wife, slicing away even more diligently. ‘We should be ready by noon. Can’t be far off by the shadows. See that Tom has the ale. Quiet, Jix. Have they started the shearing yet?’

‘Poor Jix, missing all the fun,’ said Sir Hugh, patting him. ‘If you’d only learn to leave sheep alone and stop barking at them, you could have been out there with the others.’ Marion had often observed that Sir Hugh was more ready to talk to his dog than to his wife.

‘You should be outside,’ Dame Margaret said to Sir Hugh. ‘You should be on the mounting block, as you usually are, watching over it all. Go on out, we’ll bring the food soon.’

He went reluctantly, and stepped up on to the mounting block next to the drinking trough at the entrance to the yard. The two were made from three large blocks of stone. They had been cut and dragged from the stone cliff-face across the stream when stone was being brought from there for building the church – that is, before anyone in the village could remember. Stone from Rockwell could have been used – Rockwell was no further and, being all downhill, the journey would have been easier, but no one, least of all the Rockwell families, would have agreed to chopping a chunk out of the rock-face from where their pure water flowed. This was partly for fear of diverting the secret water courses, partly for fear of disobliging the gods that had sent them this life-preserving water source. And no one dared touch the other lumps of rock further up the forested hill behind Rockwell farm. The idea that they belonged to the Devil had been strengthened by the tale of how one dusky evening years ago, the Rockwell children, returning home with bundles of firewood, had seen the Devil flying in the air and alighting on top of the balancing rock and had fled home screaming. Only Martin, who was eight at the time, had stood his ground and watched and told them it was only an owl – a huge owl he admitted, and he had seen it against the sky giving a dead mouse or something to a little owl also on the rock. This hardly consoled the frightened children, and the suspicion that owls and devils were somehow in league was fortified in the minds of the villagers.

When Marion came out of the Hall the sun was covered by one of the skyful of shining clouds which had been gathering in the last hour. She turned back to the oak tree, recognizing Alice’s yells. She was in Meg’s tiny arms and Mary was reaching up to pat her back.

‘She fell over,’ Meg excused herself for misminding her charge. There was a bump on Alice’s forehead and one of her squashy little hands was grazed.